A Week On OpenOffice

So here it is, Friday. I have been working away for a week in OpenOffice Writer and I have had some time to assess the impact. I have written and revised my work quite happily and so far I am not missing Scrivener too much. This surprises me. It really does. I have written my last 5 books in Scrivener and have really enjoyed doing so.

My only real conclusion is that modern word-processors are catching up with the Scrivener features I like in exactly the same was other operating systems are catching up with and even surpassing OSX. Yeah– I know that’s a huge claim to make in a throwaway line– I’ll get back to it at a future date.

There are some things I miss, the Target word count and the Session word count features but that is about it. I am really enjoying the freedom to use just about any machine I own in the knowledge that I can finish what I start on any of them.

As Cory Doctorow pointed out in his Guardian article, there is just not very much dramatic about switching to Linux. The same can be said for OpenOffice. I would not want to have to deal with .docx files in it on a regular basis but for my needs it works just fine. Indeed it fills me with an odd nostalgia. Looking at it is like looking at the old pre-Ribbon Word and for me this is a good thing. I wrote 15 novels in Word and nothing but Word and God alone only knows how much gaming stuff.

I also managed to write a blog post every day this week while getting my writing work done. Given the fact that I used to consider a couple of blog posts a year good going, I am pleased with myself.